Gertrude by Hermann Hesse Read Free Book Online Page B

healthy leg for that.” Laughing, he emptied his glass and again looked gloomy and thoughtful. Then he said: “What made you interested in composing?”
    I told him how music had affected me since I was a young boy. I told him about the previous summer, about my flight into the mountains, about the song and the sonata.
    â€œI see,” he said slowly, “but why does it give you pleasure? You can’t express sorrow on paper and be finished with it.”
    â€œI don’t want to do that,” I replied. “I don’t want to thrust aside and be rid of anything but weakness and constriction. I want to feel that pleasure and pain arise from the same source, that they are aspects of the same force and portions of the same piece of music, each beautiful and each essential.”
    â€œMan,” he shouted vehemently, “you have a crippled leg! Can music make you forget it?”
    â€œNo, why? In any case, I can never make it better.”
    â€œAnd doesn’t that make you despair?”
    â€œIt does not please me, you can be sure of that, but I hope it will never bring me to despair.”
    â€œThen you are lucky, but I wouldn’t exchange a leg for that kind of luck. So that is how it is with your music! Marian, this is the magic of art that we read about so much in books.”
    â€œDon’t talk like that!” I cried angrily. “You yourself don’t sing just for your salary but because it is a source of pleasure and satisfaction to you. Why do you mock me and yourself? I think it is cruel.”
    â€œHush,” said Marian, “or Muoth will become angry.”
    He looked at me and said, “I won’t be angry. You are quite right, really. But you can’t feel so bad about your leg. Otherwise music-making would not be such a compensation to you. You are a contented sort of person. Anything can happen to you and you still remain contented—but I would never have believed it.” Muoth sprang angrily to his feet. “And it isn’t true. You set the Avalanche Song to music; that was no indication of consolation and satisfaction—but of despair. Listen!”
    Suddenly he went to the piano and it became quieter in the room. He began to play, made a mistake, then omitted the introduction and sang the song. He now sang it differently from the way he had sung it in my room, and I could tell that he had sung it often since then. He now sang it aloud in the deep baritone voice that I had heard from the stage, and the strength and intense feeling in his voice made one forget the unrelieved distress of the song.
    â€œThis man says he wrote that purely for pleasure. He doesn’t know anything about despair and is perfectly contented with his lot,” he cried and pointed his finger at me. There were tears of shame and anger in my eyes. I saw everything through a mist, and in order to end it I stood up to go.
    Then I felt a delicate yet strong hand press me back into the armchair and gently stroke my hair, so that tingling warm waves washed over me, I closed my eyes, and choked back my tears. Looking up, I saw Heinrich Muoth standing in front of me. The others did not appear to have observed the whole scene and my agitation. They were drinking wine and laughing.
    â€œYou are a child,” said Muoth softly. “When a man writes songs like that, he should be above this kind of thing. But I am sorry. I find a person whom I like and we have hardly been together at all when I begin to pick a quarrel with him.”
    â€œOh, all right,” I said with embarrassment, “but I should like to go home now. The best part of the evening is finished.”
    â€œVery well, I will not press you to stay. The rest of us will have another drink yet, I think. Would you mind seeing Marian home? She lives on the inner side of the moat; it is not out of your way.”
    The pretty woman looked at him curiously for a moment. Then she turned to me and